SWNOVELXO Chapter 7: Chapter 7: Blackline Protocols
Volume 1 – Shadow Initialization
"When you erase something from the system, where does it go?"
---
Jake stepped through the vanished wall.
Not into another tunnel. Not into another city. Not into anything mapped.
What waited on the other side wasn't a place — it was a failure.
A Blackline Zone.
An unrendered, forgotten chunk of simulation code.
Half-built structures floated midair.
Textures blinked in and out, unfinished.
Gravity twisted sideways, as if it had given up following logic.
And in the center of it all — a throne made of corrupted system shards.
Jake didn't sit. He observed.
> "They store you here, huh," he muttered.
"Everything too powerful to delete… but too unstable to be free."
---
A whisper brushed against his mind. Not a voice. Not a thought.
Just an agreement.
The Blackline Zone knew him.
It had been waiting.
Suddenly, the digital fog pulsed.
A figure emerged from the fragments.
Cloaked in static.
Eyes like null data points.
No mouth. No ID. No record.
But Jake recognized it immediately.
> A former anomaly.
Someone like him.
Except it hadn't survived rejection.
---
"You're the backup," Jake said quietly. "The failed me they almost kept."
The entity didn't respond with words. It moved.
Its steps erased floor tiles. Its presence collapsed memory frames around it.
Jake didn't flinch.
"I'm not here to fight you."
Still, the figure raised its hand.
A lance formed — not from weapon data, but from raw memory corruption.
The kind of damage that made timelines forget what year it was.
---
[BLACKLINE PROTOCOL ACTIVATED]
[CONFLICT: Jake Lagon vs Entity_X0R-Refused]
[REASON: Authority Clash – Dual Sovereign Contamination]
---
Jake's feet lifted an inch off the floor.
Not by choice — but because this place didn't have "floor" anymore.
He reached behind his back. Not for a weapon.
For a seal.
A personal one.
A lock made not by the system, but by himself.
> "If I break this," he whispered, "you remember who you were supposed to be."
He crushed the seal.
The broken entity screamed without a mouth.
And in that scream, a thousand failed timelines howled at once.
---
Memories poured into the zone: fragments of Jakes that never made it —
One who died during simulation sync.
One erased by system overwrite.
One who was too kind.
One who was too angry.
Now, all of them were being funneled into this thing before him.
Jake stepped closer.
> "But I'm the version that survived," he said.
"You are not my enemy. You're my consequence."
And then — he did something no one expected.
He embraced the entity.
For one second, the Blackline collapsed into silence.
The fog cleared.
And only Jake Lagon remained.
---
[SYSTEM UPDATE DENIED]
[Blackline Protocol Overwritten]
[Subject: Jake Lagon – Fully Integrated with X0R Variant]
[Warning: Absolute Identity Unlocked]
---
Jake opened his eyes again.
He was no longer in the Blackline.
He stood at the center of the city's mainframe tower.
No transition. No travel.
The simulation had forcibly accepted him again.
Because it had no choice.
---
He looked up at the tower — glowing with locked knowledge, creation rights, and the roots of the system itself.
"They're going to regret giving me access," Jake whispered.
And for the first time…
The system whispered back.
> "We never gave you anything."
---
End of Chapter 7